IT STILL HAUNTS ME

Several years ago Arlena and I were returning from a visit in southern Florida and stopped somewhere in, I think, Georgia or maybe South Carolina, to get a motel room for the night. We got our room and headed across the parking lot to a nearby restaurant to get something to eat. Halfway across the lot a gentleman approached us and asked if we could give him some money for a motel room. He was a Navy vet and was returning home from the local VA hospital where he was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer treatments. The shunt was still in his arm into which the chemicals were inserted.

We gave him ten dollars and headed to dinner. Both of us, almost as soon as we sat down said, “Why didn’t we just pay for his motel room?” We knew, even if he had enough money to pay for a room for him and his wife, he would still need money for something to eat and probably for gas to make it back home. We were blessed. Still are and abundantly so, else we could not have afforded the Florida excursion.

But it was too late. And it still haunts me. What was I thinking? What were we thinking (if I can speak for Arlena and I can)? We are blessed enough to be able to help those less blessed and we know it and yet, when the time comes to share those blessings, sometimes we – I, to speak for myself – go braindead.

I shared that story at a bible study a few weeks ago. The participants told be that I should get over it. It was really no big deal and we did help in the way the gentleman asked. Maybe so. But we could have done so much more. That’s why I can’t and I do not think I ever will get over it, getting over leaving undone something I should and could have done. It still haunts me years later.

Personally, I am thankful that I cannot get over it. It has helped me become more aware of my blessings and that I can be even more generous with those blessings. After all, I can’t take them with me. Is it not what blessing are for: to be shared and to be shared especially with those who are less blessed and even more especially with those who in the moment are in real need?

That is where I was at that moment in time and I blew it. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last time. Humanly speaking, I am not always aware of the moment because it passes all too quickly. It is only when I have time to reflect back on those moments and realize the missed opportunity God had set before me to respond the way I could and should that I want to kick myself.

I suspect I am not alone in all this. Most of us take our blessing sometimes almost for granted. Even more, we tend to forget that we really don’t deserve to be so blessed. The gentleman I helped, but not in the way I could have and should have, was younger than me, was a veteran and was dying. That’s why I am still haunted and deserve to be.